Damian's POV
The name had left my mouth before I'd fully decided to say it.
Not from weakness — I'd been moving toward telling her for days, turning it over, finding the right moment. The note had simply removed the option of choosing the moment myself.
Which, I suspected, was precisely why it had been left.
Whoever was feeding Lena these fragments — the photograph, the first note, now this — they weren't just destabilising her. They were destabilising me. Removing my control over the narrative, forcing my hand, making sure information arrived before I could shape how it landed.
It was a sophisticated strategy.
And watching Lena's face as she processed the name I'd said, I felt the familiar cold weight of understanding that I was several moves behind someone who had been playing this
